Category: Let's talk
Hello, all.
This board refers to Christianity and the blind. After attending a Christian institution for 2 years now, I have noticed that evangelists mission is usually to "bring people to Jesus Christ." Instead of focusing on individuals domestically, many Christians feel an urgency by God to travel to various countries to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, millions of individuals throughout the United States are excluded, especially those who have disabilities. A huge weakness that I have observed thus far is the inability of evangelists, pastors, and others to disciple someone who has a disability. There is a great blog pertaining to the Gospel and disabilities in general located at: www.disabledchristianity.blogspot.com In it, Jeff McNair, a special education professor describes the injustices of the religion.
While on a mission's trip this weekend in Philadelphia, PA, pastors kept referring to "God had called them to begin a church." What does that mean? Have any of you guys ever felt the unique presence of God before in your life? Please, this topic should be devoted to serious discussion only. The reason I raise these concerns is because this is a blindness-related site and am curious as to the answers I will receive.
Yes, I've felt the presence of God in my life before. No, it wasn't real. Yes it was created by the indoctrination I received as a small child from every person I met in the small town I grew up in. No, I don't want people preaching to me about how my blindness is the work of God. Yes, it makes me want to choke people when they say I am one of God's special people. No, I have never actually choked someone for saying it. Yes I think that blindness and other disabilities are the key to proving God doesn't exist, or at the very least that the bible is wrong. (for why, visit www.whywon'tgodhealamputees.com) Yes, I think missionaries are one of the most evil things done by Christians and other religious groups. No, I don't think its possible to have a serious discussion about fairy tales and bedtime stories. I have a hard time taking people seriously when I find out they believe this bullshit. It astounds me that a grown adult can grow out of belief in santa claus and the tooth fairy, but tell them that a man was born of a virgin, was killed and came back to life, walked on water and turned water into wine, and they eat that shit up. God we're a stupid species of monkey.
Uh. I was baptized at age 13 and kinda felt like I couldn't think any bad thoughts for a couple hours after, but that was all. Just psychological. You get what you expect.
Hmm, interesting.
I was baptized in a Catholic church, as this is the religion that my mom followed. Not impressed with Catholicism, she quickly rebelled against the whole ordeal and its opera characteristics. Each religion carries a certain amount of associated guilt. Since I was baptized so young, I have no recollection of the Holy Spirit dwelling within me.
I was officially ordained as a follower of Jesus while attending Liberty University, located in Lynchburg, VA.
I have been wondering what wil happen to people who are autistic and cannot hear the "Good News?" Are these people doomed for hell?
Not to mention when you go into a church or some other religiously affiliated event, people always refer to God making a person blind for a specific reason. They say that the first thing you will see if you believe in Jesus is the Father. That makes me joyful to know, but why would got create differences in the world? Why would he create people with intellectual disabilities who can't even have a normal life?
because he doesn't exist.
I was brought up in a half and half family. My mother is deeply religious, but not forceful, or preachy about her belief. She practice quietly. My father believed in God, but felt the church was hurting the people especially the black community, because they never gave back, but took. He felt if we were all one under God, why should we need so many churches?
As to my blindness, and because I was exposed to so many different types of religions and non-religion, I learned that it depended on the person to how blindness was thought.
I spent much time in churches, and different types as a goer, and a musician, and I’ve seen God do good things for some, and I’ve seen people pretending to be of God do bad things.
Yes, I felt, and do feel God in my life, but not as a force to make me good, nor a force to fear, but a giving, loving, and understanding force, because if we believe in God, and we believe in humanity, we notice there are many types of people.
Because I once could see, I suppose if I were to regain total vision, the first thing I’d wish to see if a beautiful landscape with hopefully a beautiful woman sitting in it. I don’t want to see a book, nor do I believe seeing a book makes mea a true believer. Can I not see that book with my hands, and have I not seen that book with my eyes?
This has not changed me.
I have also seen the statues of Jesus, the cross, and I have felt them as well, and unless I was in a spiritual frame of mind, they were objects, or things, nothing but.
Maybe this comes from native blood, but I see God as nature, not in books, thought, buildings.
I don’t see my disability as a curse of God, but a medical, or scientific issue, because if the doctors had been more skilled, or less willing to experiment with my mother’s health, I’d not have been as I am. That wasn’t a God dealt thing, but a human dealt thing.
I have learned that, and I feel, a person’s belief, or nonbelief is personal, spiritual.
Last I feel the people that avoid the blind in church or religion do not truly understand God, and Gods way, and should not be allowed to evangelize anyone. These are the blind, and are not open hearted nor minded.
It is a shame, but this is life.
Yep, pretty things, god did it. Bad things, humans did it. Typical.
GIGO, IMO.
This topic has made me think some, and I’ll thank you for that.
I’d like to indulge in a bit of musing.
I understand everyone will not be exposed to the many things I was, not because my parents were educated in how to raise a disabled child, but due to the luck of the draw perhaps.
I was taken to church by my mother, as I’ve stated, but also my father never went, but never told my mother she should not, and never made it a bad thing that we did go. He was supportive.
In that group or setting I was never exposed to people feeling they could heal me, nor told my disability was a sin or fault. Sure, people were not comfortable with it, and were sad about it, but for some reason religious teaching never centered on it.
Because I was blind, other church or religious groups would provide services, and invite us to camps, and such things. In these settings was where I learned that blindness was a bad and could be healed if only I would believe strong enough.
Other family members, and neighbors would take me aside and pray for me. My mother, religious would smile and tell me to permit it. My dad would say they mean well, and ask me if it worked in a joking manner. He’d rub my eyes and say, “can you see now boy?”
The next thing was being told at the age I could understand why I was as I am. Medicine’s mistakes. If doctors had left God’s work alone, I’d have not been blind, because I have 4 older siblings that are not disable at all.
We also worked for doctors cleaning offices, and these doctors would ask my dad about me, and talk to him about it. During these discussions I was always allowed to listen, and was never told to go away, so I again understood I was not a religious failing.
Maybe it should be the medical profession, place to bring all disable persons in at some point for a fact finding chat.
Was your parent a drug user, were you exposed to something that caused your disability before birth, or after? These facts should be laid out to why you are as you are.
I think that would help many of us make it through.
Some of the doctors we worked for were Jewish as well, and I was exposed to many different religious and non-religious thinking, but again, that was the luck of the draw.
My parents would make sure I understood about the people inviting me to these camps, and tell me before I went if I was ever uncomfortable to let them know and they’d bring me home.
Education, and I don’t mean book learning, was always offered, and opinions bad or good were always argued.
I laugh, because my dad went to church at his funeral, and he’d muse about how much it was the preacher got off his dying.
He respected men of God however, and would frequently invite them over to shoot pool, for dinner, and through that I learned these people were just that, people trying to make it through.
We had one Method us preacher that loved a good whiskey, and a good game of pool, but he was still a good man and a respectable man of God. I never thought any less of him because he had a drink.
He’d never drink more than one or 2, and never brought his Bible, teachings, and religion to the house on his sleeve, but you could tell he was a God man.
Just some musings.
So I have an honest consideration to put forward here.
We all know that our senses can play tricks on us: you thought you saw a person and in reality it was a shadow of something else. You thought you heard a baby crying in reality it was a Siamese cat.
Why, when we understand that our senses are imperfect, do we assume a religious experience validates something? It's just a sensory experience. In fact, they can give you drugs now, which one set of hormones will cause you to see heaven and angels, while another set will cause you to see demons and hell. Whatever your upbringing's version of these happens to be.
I sometimes wonder if the state of mind drugs put you oin has much to do with your state of mind without?
Some can have a smoke, and relax and not see anything. Others have a smoke and see things devils, or angels.
Some can take a drink of good whiskey and relax, while others after a few drinks get angry, violent. Was that violent behavior in them before they took that drink?
Its for a mixture of reason Leo. We put religion on such a pedestal in our society that it is blasphemous to say that a religious experience is just biochemistry, not god. The religious need religious experiences to be true so badly that they will believe anything in order to make it so. The leaders of religion need to keep their followers hooked, so they feed them cute stories of religious experiences. Finally, a lot of people are stupid, plain and simple. So to them everything is a religious experience because they're too dumb to know any better.
I do sometimes feel God's presence - all knowing, wonderful, wise, compassionate. Then my wife tells me it's unhealthy to spend so much time in front of a mirror.
S M H....
For real,
That joke that your dad used to say is hilarious!! People around campus have attempted to "pray" for me, that I may have perfect hearing, and also the ability to see again. These experiences were often condemned by me as huge jokes. Yes, God can heal people, but he hasn't since the writing of the New Testament? Why is this?
Some individuals, in an effort to feel included instead of excluded in society join a religious group to feel like he or she is better than the non-religious. When becoming a Christian for the first time, pride kept me afloat, but then, I realized that A Christian isn't any different from a regular human being. If God conquered all sin, then why is the world imperfect? If we sin, why do we have forgiveness? Why can't we just sin repeatedly and not go to heaven?What does a relationship with God even look like? Both my parents were never very religious, so it wasn't until I arrived at Liberty that people prayed for my disability. Face it: Blindness is just a reality. Do people belong to religious affiliations just to get through life? How do you know where you are goinganyway?
Nathan.
I was raised nonreligious. My parents weren't against it, we just never went to church. I knew people who did, but most of the people I knew didn't, or if they did I had no idea. Religion wasn't really a part of my upbringing. I remember being about three or four, and asking a friend of my dad's if he knew what God was. He gave me a vague answer about a guy in the sky, and I said something like, "That's weird", and that was that.
Simply put: religion has never really been part of my life, and I view my blindness as the medical complication (bilateral PHPV) that it is.
Wait, if you weren't raised religious, why are you at liberty university? Are you visiting there, or actually attending?
Funny story... I am actually attending Liberty University, as it was the only college I was accepted into.
and, so, now, since you're attending that university, you're suddenly Christian?
Ah, Ed. A blind man that can look in a mirror? It's a miracle, I say!
Chelsea, I doubt a university like that, which is so politically well connected and acts as a funding shelter for the Republican party would accept someone who was not a Christian. He probably had to sign the line stating that he was one.
Think back to your history of the 1980, the third-party candidate Pat Robertson. Even the 700 club with all its fans couldn't raise enough money for that. So where did it come from? The tobacco growers, sheltered through a political action fund at Bob Jones. Commonly happens with the parochial places, and though tobacco doesn't seem like much now, it was huge then. This is when people were just starting to politicize second-hand smoke, quotes like Bob Dole saying "People say milk is bad for you too."
The university in question has its advantage by maintaining its religious affiliation. For Republicans, the more conservative the affiliation, the better. I somehow doubt our original poster was not a follower before going there, as it simply doesn't add up to how that demographic typically behaves.
Granted my money / source information is quite out of date - I don't make a habit of following these types of places till they or one of theirs makes a splash in the political pond like a sunfish catching a fly.
For me, the safest bet in terms of religion/spirituality of any kind is agnosticism. Neither extreme faith in anything, but particularly Christianity, nor absolute atheism satisfies. Christianity doesn’t answer it for me because you can be a non-Christian and be a very good person, and to my understanding, if you’re not “saved” by the one true messiah, you’re going to hell. If you’re an absolute atheist, the answer of why all this and what are we doing here has to be just because. It means there’s effectively no reason and nothing we do is either good or bad except in the moment. Dunno if I’m explaining it right, but that’s the dilemma I’m in. Honestly I tend to lean a bit toward reincarnation. There was a biology teacher, a man of science, when I was in college, who pointed out that nothing is completely destroyed, and who can say that’s so about consciousness? If consciousness is energy and all that. So, spiritual agnosticism is where I’m at, but then I think we all have to find our own answers because I don’t think there’s absolute proof either way.
Anyway, Christianity and the blind. It seems to me that far too many proselatizers and evangelists zero in on the blind and other disabled thinking we’re an easy mark because, after all, why would we not want to be healed of our terrible tragedies? Or maybe we’re supposed to be “God’s special people” or something like that. Well, my blindness isn’t a tragedy, and I don’t want to be “special” because of my blindness. I’m far too prickly (and hedonistic, by the way) to be an inspirational Christian, Besides, I’m blind because of pre-natal exposure to German measles. I now have no eyes at all, so my blindness isn’t, I don’t think, going to be fixed by anything much les religion, so I’m gunna go on with my life as a gay blind white male approaching 50. Don’t think that makes me the right-wing Christian ideal of one of God’s chosen ones.
Ok, I'll explain this again; I seem to do this a lot. Agnosticism is not a point on the scale from theist to atheist. The middle of that scale is deism, not agnosticism.
Theism and atheism deal with belief. If you are a theist, you believe in God and that he/she/it/they effect the world in an active manner. If you are an atheist, you believe there is no evidence, or that god simply does not exist. The middle of that is deism, where you believe there is a god, but he/she/it/they do not take part in the activities of the world. The world was created, and that's it.
Agnosticism deals with knowledge, not belief. It is the idea that we cannot conclusively prove whether god does or does not exist. It is a default setting for anyone who claims to think rationally. You can be a theistic agnostic, or an atheistic agnostic, or a deist agnostic. They aren't mutually exclusive of each other.
Basically you can say, "I believe in god, but we cannot know whether he exists", that's theistic agnosticism. You can also say, "I believe in a god that does not control our lives, but we can't know whether he exists"; that's deistic agnosticism. Finally you can say, "I do not believe there is a god, but its impossible for us to know for sure"; that's atheistic agnostic. Agnosticism is not a setting on the scale of belief.
The problem is that people think agnosticism is saying we don't know; it isn't. Agnosticism is saying we can't know. If you say, "I don't know", or "I'm not sure" you're talking about being undecided, not being agnostic. Agnostics are not undecided, they are honest about rationality and reason. Have I explained that clearly?
Oh, and please don't come back with, "Well that's not what I feel agnosticism is". It doesn't matter what you feel, it matters what the words mean. If you're using the word wrong, your feelings don't make it correct.
Cody, I don't think I've ever seen you lay it out this clearly. That explains a lot. Atheists, at least of my generation, have the reputation for being rational objectivists, engineers, scientists, the works. And so people like myself have misapplied the terms because of wrongly thinking atheism had nothing to do with belief. It sounds like from what you're saying that agnosticism has to do with knowledge and rationalism, while theism is a belief that is the opposite congruent of theism.
May sound strange to you, and probably it's cultural, considering who makes up a majority of the world's atheist community, but many have thought atheism was rational objectivism not belief, and that agnosticism is somewhere in between. There is where that mistake comes from.
Thanks for the explanation.
Hi Leo:
Actually, I din't have to sign a dotted line or anything claiming that I was a Christian in order to attend Liberty University. As I said earlier, the only reason I am attending such a school is due to the fact that this is the only place I was accepted into. Obviously, I applied to others but was denied. Chelsea, I am not stating that just because I attend a religious university means that I am a Christian. Honestly, I think Christians assume that they are better than other people. I got "saved." whatever that means. The reason why I initially brought up this tpic concerns peoples thought processes. You would think that Christians, above all, would be the most socially accepting. This is a big negative. I know there is a God, he created the world, but what else has he done? Basically, we work all our lives, die, and the cycle begins with a new generation.
Nathan
This is sort of related to religion but not really.
I thought that Christians would be acceptings towards those with disabilities such as blindness. Since high school, I have struggled to fit in socially, even the blind community poses a challenge for some reason. Basically, since the students are Christians at this university, I thought that would somehow positively affect the number of friends I could have. However, it has done the opposite. Genrally, I am an outgoing person, but repeadly, on-campus, people also inquire as to whether or not I ned assistance. Even though I tell them know and try to begin a meaningful conversation, the person just walks away. What an interesting person? I mean, I guess what I am trying to ask you guys is simple: how do you fit in with other college students regardless of religious affiliation and blindness?? Even if I did transfer to another school, I feel that I would still face this dilemma.
Thanks,
Nathan.
You are right to say people are people, regardless of religion.
Nathan, stop thinking that just cause people are Christian, that means that they'll automatically treat you with kindness.
the way people treat one another, has absolutely nothing to do with what religious beliefs they have or don't have, or the fact they attend a Christian school, or any other thing you wanna put in place of what I mentioned.
once you start looking at people as just that, people, and learn to find acceptance within yourself, you might find you're better able to make it in the world.
I have said this before but I will gladly say it again. In an ideal world people would look past our blindness and view us as people. However, this is not the case because we are different from the norm to them. The first thing a person notices about another person is physical characteristics, and the most obvious one for us is the fact that we have a cane, dog, whatever. There isn't a way to hide it, and that is part of accepting that.
Having said this, you have the option of how you present yourself despite this characteristic. Do you want to look like the blindy who is always lost, unapproachable, and one who has no boundaries? (example could include that you grope whatever is in front of you, air or objects or people) Do you want to try and look overly confident and then look like an ass when you eat a wall or fall down a flight of stairs, because you refused to walk with a cane? Or, do you want to accept the fact that you are blind, that it does not fully define you, and that you are a capable person that is cool to hang with? It's on you.
Interesting topic by the way.
Nathan as stated people are people.
You are correct, you’d think Christians were taught better manners about loving their neighbors, but they aren’t.
The way I learned to get around people is to first talk about their fear of you, and why.
I’d want to talk to a woman, so I’d step up and ask her something crazy, like, if you have lunch with me I promise not to make a mess on the table. Smile.
Sometimes I’d be perfectly serious, and say, I like you, so give it a chance and see how it works. The main thing is to meet that fear head on. It sort of shames people in to at least trying.
Next, whatever you do, be clean as possible at all times. I smiled, teased, I’d go have a beer with folks, sit down and ask them about themselves.
I was a musician, so was a bit different looking. I had braided hair down my back with beads, but was always clean, and smelled good, and smiled.
The ones that walk away, let them walk, but some will stick.
You’ll not have everyone liking you, but if you are crazy enough to meet them face up, they have to walk away, or laugh and give it a go, just because you ask.
The one thing you will never overcome is people’s revulsion or whatever, but you can minimize it.
Last rejection is not personal, so don't take it that way. The better you can deal with that, the better you'll do when you are cutting that string between you and the person you want to talk with.
Chelsea,
I understand that people are people. Thanks for real for the tips.
Hi Nate, and all,
Good topic in my opinion, nate. I've told you much of my take on this over the last year and a half we've known each other, however I'll reiterate, for those who don't know my story. I was raised Lutheran. That is, that my parents went to a Lutheran church. I hated it. I was treated, from the start, like Ididn't exist. Most of the people felt sorry for me, it seemed. I made friends with a girl named Ashley, who did a number of things over the years to earn my distrust. Still, I attempted being her friend. She was the only sort-of friend I had at the place. One time, there was some meeting at the church. I went to it, primarily because my parents went and they couldn't find a baby-sitter for my brother and I, I think. I was like, seven. At one point, Ashley sat me down in the nursery in a chair and told me she'd be right back. She left. I was there for like an hour by myself. I called out for her, but she never materialized. My mom came in and found me crying. She asked where Ashley had gone. I said I didn't know. Eventually, she found Ashley somewhere in the church. She had decided to ditch me and proceed to hide from me. My mom had her apologize, but I could tell she wasn't really sorry. As I stated, she did other things over the years too. So, at a very early age, I began to distrust Christians. I had several other experiences as a teen, at churches, which weren't much better. All this, combined with an abusive home environment, led me to believe that God didn't care about me. I vehemently hated God.
When I was 17, I had an experience from a friend, which changed my life where God is concerned. I chose to get saved after a period of time, due to his warm caring attitude and his not pushing me to do so. I believe that he is the only reason I believe in God today. Three years ago, I had a horrible experience with my most recent ex, whom, after almost seven years of us being together, decided he wanted to turn all religious on me. He proceeded to kick me out of the apartment we shared and gave me two weeks to find a new place because he wished to get baptized and become a Seventh day Adventist. In the last twelve years, I have been to a few other churches and have found one I like recently, around here. I will go when I feel I wish to do so. Because of all my bad experiences, I choose to hold religion at arms length. I don't trust it. I don't like reading the Bible. I find it mind-numbingly boring and I could care less about what happened 1000000 years ago. There are so many differing variations of the Bible anyway, that I don't believe any of them really. I'm a skeptic and I dont' believe that the Bible has remained pure over the last 1000000 years. How do we know that any of it is true?? We don't, in my opinion. And I agree with the person above who asked why are there so many religions in the world if the Bible is truly something we all must follow to a T?
I believe more in spending time with God praying quietly in my own head, than I do in going to church. I hate being prayed for to "Heal," my eyes. I could care less if I see again in this lifetime. I don't read the Bible, but I do, when the mood strikes, listen to Christian music. I also sing some Christian songs from time to time. I feel God's presence around me every day. When I hold my animals, when I wake up in the morning and see the sun out my window. When I take a walk outside and feel the leave uner my feet and listen to the breeze in the trees and smell the fresh, clean, air. When I spend time by rivers, streams, or by the ocean. When a stranger or a friend does me an act of kindness, or when I get to give back to someone I care about. I feel God so much in nature and in my life every day. There's tons of bad in this world, but there's tons of good in this world, too. That, I believe, is God, plain and simple. I don't need to go to church to believe. Once in a while, I don't mind going, but for the most part, I steer clear. I do however, give to charities when I am able to. I help out friends. I abide by the ten commandments, except for the one about honoring the Sabbath day. I very rarely drink. i have never smoked, done drugs, etc. I would do many things for someone I care about, including letting them live in my home for a time if they needed a place to stay. I have forgiven people who have hurt me badly and moved on from it. From what I have seen, I am much more Christian than many so-called super-Christian folks out there. How I do things works for me.
as for missionaries, I can't stand them. I had two who came to my door just today in fact. Why do they always start coming around the holidays and not any other time of year? They tried to convert me to the morman religion. I said no thank you twice and finally, they left. If I say I believe in God and that I'm happy with my spiritual life, why do they keep insisting and go" But miss, have you ever read the book of Morman?" They gave me a card, which of course, I cannot read. After they left, I tore it up and threw it in the recycle bin. I don't believe in pressuring people to become a Christian or if they're already Christian, to spend my time converting someone to a different belief system than they're comfortable with. In my experience, pressuring people doesn't help. It simply makes them angry and drives them further away. As do all the, "Oh my gosh, you can't see, you poor thing!! Have you ever had someone pray over you? Maybe if I pray for you, God will heal you!" comments.
Take Care,
Dawnielle
Cody, I’m not sure the point of your lecture. I said I’m an agnostic, which means that I cannot prove conclusively that a god does or does not exist. Therefore, I have no knowledge one way or the other that a god does or does not exist. I am frankly not sure what I actually believe except to say that I’m inclined to believe that there may be something like a god. How much we understand him/her/it is debatable, and I don’t think the Koran, the Bible or any other holy book does the job of helping us to understand. Since I get the concept of the difference between knowledge and belief, I’m not sure what you’re attempting to prove now by explaining it, unless it was to drive home a point I, for one, already knew, or to point out that perhaps my previous posting could have been clearer. Oh well. Looking back on it, I see that arguably it could have been. But even if agnosticism deals with knowledge, you’re still dealing at least partially in belief. Christians will tell you they know conclusively, from the Bible, that God is real and Jesus is his only begotten son. You can insist this is only belief and hence false knowledge, but you’ll never convince a devout Christian to depart from his/her supposed truth. Agnostics will tell you that it is impossible to know that a god exists, and they can support this conclusion with hard evidence. But even here, I don’t see how you get past the concept of belief because in the end, agnostics believe it impossible to know that a god exists. The Free Online Dictionary actually defines agnosticism as “One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God,” or, in the alternative, one “who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.” Also, from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, agnosticism is defined as a person who does not have a definite belief about whether God exists or not” or “a person who does not believe or is unsure of something.” Even if you looked at the full definition on this site, you’ll see that an agnostic is someone who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknowable,” or “one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god.” I could probably go on and find more citations, but I think I’ve pretty much established that I was not using the word incorrectly. Agnosticism is a belief that the existence or non-existence of a god is unknowable. I hope I’ve also explained things clearly.
That makes sense, Johndy.
As to how Christians should or should not treat the blind, the mythology really has nothing specific on disabilities, except in the old testament laws in one place where it mandates not to curse the deaf or put a stumbling stone in front of the blind. While you could have rocks thrown at you till you died for skipping the Sabbath, being raped in a city street and taking the Lord's name in vain, (cursing), there is no punishment ascribed to cursing the deaf or putting a stumbling stone in front of the blind.
In fact people with disabilities were not allowed entrance into the temple as priests, not on merits, but simply because they have a defect.
In the New testament, all you have are healings.
This doesn't mean Christians *aren't* civil to people with disabilities, it simply means there is nothing specific about this in their mythology. I'd venture to guess you have about the same responses in or outside of Christianity, no better and no worse. What isn't fair though, is to claim they should somehow be superior in this aspect, because their mythology simply doesn't support it.
Like Ghandi, they can talk about love the world, love the sinner, but hate other groups as much as the rest of us express hatred for those groups. Take our mutual loathing for the 9/11 terrorists. There may be theory in their text about love for all, someplace there might be, but it's not expressed anywhere in the narrative, nor in humanity.
You just have to grow up and realize this. It's a bit like the disappointed new-agers lerning that Ghandi beat his wives and wasn't a very nice person to get along with.
That doesn't mean Christians are or aren't, but just like we tell interns who start wanting to program for a living: There's a lot of difference between theory and practice.
I’d say the Bible has information on how to treat people, disable or not.
I’d like to share something with you, and this is a thought.
You know how to bake a cake. A cake requires flower, sugar, eggs, butter, milk, and yeast to rise.
Now there are many many types of cakes, and ways to bake them, and no rule is exactly the right one, because you can get a cake doing it several ways, but you’ll still get a cake.
The Bible is like a cake. The stories in the Bible are not there as perfect rules, but guidelines to how to precede with your life.
May lives, and situations are talked about in the Bible, but there are some basics.
The problem as I see it, is people decide how the basic rules should be, and people are always trying to find fault with the Bible by using the story lines as facts to follow, not as stories of examples.
If we read the Bible like we bake cakes, thinking about how to get a good cake, not following the first recipe we read, I think we do better. It is a thinking tool, not a rule book.
You know how to treat people, so why are disable people different?
Mark 12:31
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Leviticus 19:18
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Romans 13:8-10
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,
You shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as
Yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
So you see love is something you’d not do to yourself. Would you leave yourself in a room alone and go away?
Would you put a stumbling block in your path?
Are not disable person’s people/neighbors?
There are plenty more cakes in the Bible, but you get my meaning.
I hold ministers, preachers, leaders of God to standards. You have a disabled person in your congregation, you need to talk about that so your students learn better manners.
No, you don't need a Bible, but people learn by some method, so if you are using the Bible as that method think about what you've read, not about what someone told you it says.
Problem with that is that you're cherrypicking the ones that you believe make a cake while leaving the one that says you should blow up the cake, or stone it to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath.
Johndy, I pointed out the definition because it sounded as if you were saying that you were waffling between atheism and theism and calling it agnosticism. If that's not the case, then feel free to ignore the post. However, I'd steer clear of the online dictionary, it frequently under simplifies things, including here. It says "one who believes" because its describing someone who is of the mindset called agnosticism. To get the definition of agnosticism, you'd have to look up a different word. Agnostic is a person, agnosticism is an idea. I'd also object to the word belief because you can't believe in knowing something, once you know it its no longer a belief.
Agreed, all Waynes points are cherry picked. the bible can teach you how to make a gun, just as well as how to make a cake.
i'm not being negative for negatives sake, I am trying to help shine some light in the shadows people are ignoring.
The cake was not used as a sweet, gentle, kind metaphor, but as a means to convey an idea.
You that are negative, saw it as a fairytale thing, because you see all references to the Bible, religion, as negative no matter how these things are put.
I stated on another board, you can’t understand, because you are so bent on your opinions.
If I had used a door, I suppose you’d have found a way to make a door in to something” cherrypicking”
There was no problem with the cake, only how you viewed it. The cake wasn’t something the Bible was teaching us to make, but a reference to the variety or situations written there. Sorry my friend.
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.
Proverbs 26:19.
Now we’ll get back to the ddiscussion .
Its called an analogy extention. Its where I use your poorly designed analogy to show how your posit is incorrect.
There are some beautiful things in the bible, one of my favorite sayings about love comes from one of paul's letters. There is some beautiful poetry and some cute stories to be found there. There is also a whole lot of evil crap. There's even a website called evil bible, (I think its www.evilbible.com but don't quote me) that talks about all the evil things in the bible.
Now, yes, it also contains lots of guiding principles on how to live your life. However, if you need a book to tell you not to steal, not to kill, not to rape, not to lie and not to eat your own shit, you've got bigger problems than you know about and I don't think religion is going to help you. There's nothing good in the bible that you would actually need the bible to tell you outside of a psychopath.
What's more, every single one of the principles laid down in the bible, is counteracted by god. God says not to kill, kills every first born in Egypt. God says not to steal, steals land from people to give to the jews. God says not to lie, lies to Adam and Eve and a bunch of other people. God says not to covet, then says he's a jealous god and tells them not to worship anyone else or he'll fuck their shit up. God says not to covet thy neighbor's wife, then makes the beast with two backs with an engaged teenager. So you have to pick, do you do what god says or what god does?
And besides that, even if the bible were the moral directions of god, I have yet to meet a single person in all my years who actually follows the book. The people who follow the book the closest are called crazy. You wanna know who follows the bible the closest? Its the westboro Baptists, and they're fucking nuts.
Shakes my head.
Smile.
Hi guys,
Actually, I like For Reals points. IN Silver Lightning's defense, though, no one really follows the Bible to a "T." If he or she did, that would be plain crazy!!
I can't remember, but I believe Leo Guardian referred to disabled people not even being permitted to enter the temple. Wow, that is quite interesting; it is a principle which, thus far, has not been discussed in Bible classes.
Furthermore, I believe that churches should assist those who are disabled in terms of how to interpret the Bible; consequently, if this occurred, maybe comprehending the text wouldn't prove so difficult.
Dawnielle, I agree regarding how mundane, at times, the Bible is. Since I am not a theology major, I have no clue as to how conclusive the book is. At my school, however, there is a large favoritism towards the Republican Paarty inpolitical elections, as well as people trying to follow the Bible to a "T."
In terms of pressuring someone to convert to a certain faith, yes, I agree wholeheartedly with you. A person has to believe in a religion, you just can't force beliefs upon someone.
Nathan.
I wish Adam Carolla would write his own bible. I'd buy that in a heartbeat. Lol
Based on your tendencies to cherry pic arguments, and cast your views in such a way that realistically looking at both sides of the issue is impossible, I left to conclusions, which were apparently wrong.I just assumed you chose a cake because most people like a good cake, and as such, you sought to compare religion to one via subtext. Its clear I thought to deeply in to your motives, and that my judgements were wrong.
this is why I posted the analogy about the gun. I figured both sides deserved equal representation.
I'll answer Wayne's assertions first.
Yes, Wayne you are right that there are selections in the text on how to treat people in general. I would not have made the case I did if the title wasn't specifically talking about the blind.
Anyway I agree with Cody that if you need a book to tell you to do these things you have serious problems religion can't fix, and I don't know who can.
Nathan I can answer your question about Republican voters and extreme Christianity. Let me say first that few if any on Wall Street or who run the multinational corporations your theists adore so much care at all what's in the Bible. But although we are a secular society, most nations are except some Muslim and one Jewish state, Christianity is the de facto religion. It could be called the State religion, not that the State directly enforces it. But the State gives it an entire list of exceptions that no entitlements users get.
Now, if you're the party whose interests are mainly those of the top 1% in business, how are you going to acquire votes from the masses? The democrats can claim they love and care for people and show pictures of people dying in streets to get their votes. All the republicans have for the working classes is religion. Religion for Republican plutocrats is the pawn to get all the masses to vote their way.
It's a beast that feeds itself, because it becomes "to be a Christian, you must be Republican," and to be a Republican you must be a Christian.
This is one reason many argue for people to explore other political parties not engaged in the two-party system.
But they vote republican, because that is what Christians do. Christians vote Republican because to be Republican is to be Christian.
Never mind that this is not a reality, it is a tool used to gain voters en masse. Remember the two things either communist or fascist societies can offer masses who don't want to think: Peace, Land and Bread, or a return to the Social Order (usually imagined) of yesteryear. Both are a figment of people's imaginations, and to get there from here, either group has to cherry pick bits of history to fit their agenda.
So some of us may see certain spending in government as questionable, but your Christian Republicans see it as sinful. Some of us see aspects of the War on Terror to be necessary, if improperly managed. But to Christian Republicans, this is a Crusade to win the world.
Think of your Pat Robertsons, Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs and others. Instead of your fellows and professors at college saying, "Yes, we want to give up national sovereignty to multinational corporations. We want a World State run by corporations." they say that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and Vote Republican because it is God's way.
I've literally attempted to engage with a couple of these types on business matters we actually both agreed upon. They only had a Bible text of some sort to support the Landowner's Rights position of some things that came up in the 90s. But present them a coherent argument for any of that stuff and their eyes glaze over. Why do you suppose that in 2012, the Republican primaries looked like Jesus Camp? Or their focus on the gays?
Ironically, many Republicans who are businessmen and not leaches are supporting gay marriage, since it only makes practical sense. But your fellows are getting what the Party sends out to the masses via Fox News and TBN.
"We are at war with Eurasia.
We have always been at war with Eurasia." -- The Ministry of Truth, 1984.
Forereal, I like your point about the Bible being like a cake. I also agree with whomever said that there is a lot of messed up stuff that goes on in the Bible.
Take Care,
Dawnielle
I can understand how you might think I was waffling, Cody. In some respects I think I am admittedly waffling, but only in terms of where I fall from deist to theist to atheist, just to use these three examples. In terms of the larger problem with the Bible, yes, there are some good things in it. But there are some outright lies and terrible contradictions in it that have made it possible for demagogues like those in the religious right to hijack whatever good name Christianity might have. And there are some things in the Bible, or how Christianity is at least interpreted, that have made me argue some points with people in the past only to get: "Well, that's the way we believe."
I remember years ago going to a computer class at the Carrol Center for the Blind in Massachusetts,back when computers were pretty primitive, but that's another story. We all got roommates, and I was unfortunate enough to get stuck with an evangelical Christian. He tried to save me. My biggest argument against his asumption that I was going to hell if I wasn't "saved" by Christ is that through history there were perfectly good people who had never even heard of Christ that he and his faith condemned to damnation. "Wel, that's what we believe," he said. Of course, the next day there was an incident in which he threatened to kill himself, thus possibly condemning himself to hell. I leave all of you to figure that one out, because I sure can't.
And figure this one out if you want an allegory or whatever. You're a Jew in Nazi Germany, and it's about 1941, just when the so-called Final Solution has been implemented. You lead a godly life, doing unto others what you would want done; esentially loving your neighbors as yourself in the context of Judaism, though, not Christianity. In short, you're a saint except that you had the absolute temerity to be born a Jew. This, of course, is a crime in the eyes of the state who believes that all Jews are evil. So, you're packed off, sent to Auschwitz or Saxenhausen or any one of the other hundreds of concentration camps. You're tortured. You're eventually gassed. And you goto hell because you're not saved in the name of Jesus? Somebody's a real prick.
Yeah, but don't worry, the morman church made all those jews mormans. So now they have their own planets. I know that didn't make sense, but that's basically the morman belief. You die, and you get to be a god of your own planet. I can't make this shit up.
and thus god is human, and everything is explained... or not. lol
Actually Cody, you become a God when you die. I spent some time with a Mormon girl, a really sweet girl, kind, gentle, but sadly we couldn’t get past the book. She spent much time explaining how our life would be and if I would become Mormon how beautiful it would be after we died. .
I wanted to read it all at once, and study it, because I enjoy learning, but they’d not allow me to do so. Nice fresh braille copy though.
Leo, I sometimes wonder is Christian and republican have anything to do with both centering in the South.
You can have some pretty bad cakes too, if you think about it. When my daughter was learning to cook… Smile
So, Mormonism is polytheism? Um, unless I'm interpreting this whole thing wrong, of course, which I know nothing about Mormonism per se. But wouldn't that go against the whole concept of Jesus being the son of only one god and all that? Aren't the Mormons the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints? I think my head hurts again.
I really enjoyed the people, her parents and all, I just wished they'd have let me read the whole book.
No no no. Here's how it goes. You're a morman. You go around with your magic underwear, hating gay people and being cheerful at six in the morning when you knock on people's doors. Then, one day, you knock on the wrong door and a guy shoots you in the face with a crossbow and you die.
Now, you've been a good little morman boy, so God takes you to a peaceful place, and gives you your own planet. Then you get to design that planet any way you want to, and rule it as a god. Then all the people on that planet will worship you like you worshipped the god of the earth.
So its not exactly polytheist, since they don't worship all the gods, but it acknowledges that there are other gods. Which, even the bible does that if you read it carefully. Its still bat shit crazy.
Hmm. What if we take all the magic underwear off the guys?
I'd have loved to take the underwear off that girl!. God! Magic. Yes, magic.
Sorry poster, just had too.
Hahahaha.
My mom is Budhist and my dad is Catholic, so when I was a little kid I got to go to the Budhist temple and Catholic church. I thought it was pretty fun…I never completely caught on to the whole Jesus thing…but I liked the music. When I got to high school, it seemed all my peers caught the Christianity bug for about a year and since I openly questioned the existence of God I lost all my friends until sophomore year when they all figured out partying was what actually made you cool. For a long time I thought there was no god…I went through some bad shit. But now, I feel that the universe has a higher power…call it God if you want. Still don't believe the whole Jesus thing, but I've been going to this totally chill church that has a great band and a coffee bar. Nobody there has ever come up to me and said anything about my blindness…nobody specifically blesses me or asks to pray for me and I think that's great.
So part of the Mormon distraction:
I know some of this stuff seems funny, but something happened on Her side of the family a couple years ago. It's apparently true that they baptize the dead, not exhuming bodies or anything but just having a living stand-in, I guess. Someone converted, and now wants to baptize all the dead relatives, I guess posthumous conversion?
Except it raised a lot of questions: What about those who had their own statements of faith for themselves? Some of the family was pretty sincere about it all, not just going along like most of us. Now you're dealing with respect for that person. Some family members were really quite upset because this was supposed to make someone a Mormon who in life was not one. I don't think they called it revisionist history, but it's sorta along the same vein.
Anyway that's an odd concept you don't see elsewhere. I wonder, do they think that person gets out of hell or something after that event? I'm assuming they have a Hell, most capitalized monotheists have got one, something that seems to play a major part in the most financially prosperous religions.
What? I attended a Mormon church and participated in some of the services when I believed in God but I don't remember ever learning stuff like that. Maybe it's exaggerated or I was gullible at the time. But Leo you are right: they do baptisms for the dead. I guess the family members give the Church their names and a little more background information about the person, and there ya go. That was one part I didn't understand either. I thought Mormonism was crazy after a while, but that was nothing compared to things I've heard about the Westburrow Baptist Church.
So, you are saying you can be made Mormon after you die even if you don't want to be and can't argue the point?
Bomb Westboro! Blow them all to tiny bits!
Wayne, that was the same question Her family had. And at least according to them, this was a violation because he was, I believe, Methodist. And for him, at least, this was more than family tradition but personal. I had never been this close to that situation before this topic came up.
I guess they would have an easier time with the uncommitted or agnostic, or someone who may identify as Christian in general.
I think you'll see the fundamentalist sects, at least, embracing Mormonism with more welcome arms because of the necessary political and economic alliance there. The Methodists are apparently not fundamentalists but I don't know how they see the Mormon thing, separate but equal or what. In this case, it was seen by some at least as a bit of a disrespectful move to posthumously reconvert somebody.
To me, I just see it more as revisionist history to go back and change this.
I can't go back and claim that Isaac Newton understood Quantum Mechanics, for example. Not unless I am a historical revisionist. I know matters fof religion / faith are a lot more clouded than that, but still. Me, I generally stay out of it.
As you say they are dead so they have no say in the matter, so yes. That is the philosophy I guess.
Fine, I'll make sure not to have any Mormon relitaves.
"gets to heaven. Boy, you was practicing the right way, then you died and changed, so now you's got to go back and start over."
But, Peter, these people decided for me, and because the dude had already closed and locked the box, what could I do?"
Nope, you going back.
*sigh* And I was all ready to have these 70 virgins!
Okay, okay, sorry, just had too. Lol
Interesting topic. I'm not sure my not being Christian has anything to do with my blindness. As far as I can remember, I never blamed "God" for either the cancer that made me blind or the blindness itself. I was raised Christain and once or twice felt what I thought was the presence of God. But after reading the bible back to front several times, attending Sunday school and getting confirmed, after all of that, I realized Christianity was not the religion of my heart. Where I feel something that Christians might term "the presence of God" is in other people and in nature. For me, God is not a male, nor is it a female. God is not in a far off eutopia, but all around. God is not a being that controls weather or not I am blind or have cancer, it is not an all powerful being, not really a God in the Christian sense of the word. A creator, yes, good things, sure. But for me, there is no being like the Christian devil and no hell. The Great Spirit is in all things, to some degree or another, a life force you might say, connecting us all. It's not a religion that converts others, it is a personal spirituality, I need not, should not try to bring others to the same thinking. There are no reprocussions to following or not following it, it's not like that. I don't know if this helps answer any of your questions, it's just my take on religion. My religion has nothing to do with my blindness, it's just what works for me. I don't like when people try to convert me, it seems dirty to me.
I like that concept. It is where I am.
I don't mind people trying to convert me, or I should say talking to me about there religious beliefs. I am comfortable in my thoughts to enjoy the conversation, and learn why people think as they do.
Makes some people mad, because they feel I'm not understanding "what God wants for me." Smile.
Actually never realized until now how many people on here there are who don't believe in God.
Post 65 is where I am, actually. I came to it slowly, and to me it is very comforting. I don't blame anybody for my blindness; it just happened. Or maybe I'm supposed to learn something, assuming my inclinations are correct. Speaking strictly just for me, I think maybe I have learned a few things about what I'm supposed to be here for, call me crazy if you will. I don't think people are burning in hell because they don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah. I don't think it works that way at all. The equivalent of a hell for me is knowing how your actions negatively affected others as you lived and having to review those actions for what they were. In any event, this is not supposed to be a permanent state because there's no such thing as an infinite sin. That is my belief.
I think in this case, like so many others, we have to separate correlation from causation. They are not the same, and not even related.
In my earlier post I said their mythology doesn't say anything explicit about supporting or not supporting the blind or any other group. Wayne brought up a few examples that basically illustrated it, meaning it's more of a general ethics thing.
So if you have troubles with them, you may wish to examine who among them and why.
I, for instance, was marginally among them, with the family generally, and more often than not did not associate with them of my own initiative. When their faith apologists would corner me and want to argue things, I had two responses: Smile and listen, or render an honest argument which often left them upset and muddled.
The first they called doubleminded or wishy-washy, and the second they called a hard heart. Me, I called the first being civil and the second giving an honest answer. Ultimately, they found me out, I'm sure some of them had to have known long before I came to the same conclusions. While I have no respect for begging the question, or special pleading, or confirmation biases, I do respect the people involved as human beings.
So it is possible someone looking at the situation could say they 'cornered that blind guy' all the time, but blind had nothing to do with it. It certainly does to a point with the mentally unsound types who will want to say random things about you or pray you get sight or something. But I'm not sure these are sound enough people to be responsible for their actions.
I said all this to say, if you look at the situation rationally, it's important to separate correlation from causation.
I would, however, encourage you to find your own way their and back. Unless you wish to become somebody's project. If you can live with that, perhaps it will be some kind of symbiotic or mutually parasitic relationship. But people who want to make projects of others are always thwarted and infernally frustrated by one such as I am.
Okay, time to revive this old topic! Faithful Wolf, I like your concept of religion. What I was referring to I guess, is when random people come up and say, "Can I pray for your sight"? I'm like, get the hell out of here!! It's just weird; I'm sure there are miracles, but I don't want to see. Like, once I was going back to my dorm at Liberty. I heard this girl say "Sir." "Yes, I answered." "Can I pray for you and your sight?" Not wanting to sound rude, I let her. She didn't introduce herself, say anything, just prayed and left. What the heck? That's what I have a problem with.
Oh boy, here we go, I'm an unbeliever and going to defend the Christians to a point: hold onto your panties, children.
I think what you ran into is an aberration even among the Christians. Many of them do not like these types of people either. I am not yet settled on whether they are just trying to put on a magic show, or truly are mentally unsound.
But I have seen it, when one of these would try to push itself off on me in the churches about a miracle. Some others would debate the issue with that person when they would try and get started. Not like the apologists do, but nonetheless could result in a discussion between them.
At any rate, I personally agree with Arthur C. Clark: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Substitute miracles for the word magic, and you have my answer for most of what the Christians call miracles. And substitute an as yet unknown cause for advanced technology you now have a sufficient response to their god of the gaps.
But anyway, you can always tell the lady no thanks, the Man has already been disturbed aplenty on that account. Or tell her you have doubts anything would happen. Remember, according to the Christians, you have to believe or it won't happen. Strange idea for a god/father concept, if you ask me. As a father myself, I could care less what the daughter believes about whether I will or won't do something: I just expect she speak up and tell me she has need before overdrawing an account or missing a payment, or neglecting to let us know when something is wrong with her car, and costing me more in the long run. Even then, the worse that happens is perhaps an ass-chewing.
But you didn't ask about that. Anyway, if you don't want her praying next time, tell her you don't believe it'll happen. That's pretty low risk a response even on a Christian campus. Because Christians are not universal in their beliefs about modern phenomena some call miracles. Most don't even like those who purport to cause miracles to happen.
Whatever their motivation is, it comes from the same ideas. Look, a blind person. They are suffering because I imagine if I went blind, I'd be suffering. If they were made to see, no more suffering. It's just they think they can channel powers that can turn you from a blind person into a sighted person but the powers working is entirely dependent on your beliefs. If the healer does not get the result they wish, it's your fault for lack of faith. God saying no is completely out of the question, it's unheard of!
Well, this girl came up to me yesterday and asked if she could pray for me to get my sight.
I wanted to say "no way José, but she sounded cute and I thought "what the heck."
So, she did and I got my sight back!
Actually, that's just a fantasy, but what if it did work?
I kind of admire people who do that, because no matter what you think of the practice, they are really putting their selves on the line praying for a total stranger in public.
Bob
I DID believe in the possibility, but it never happened. I thought, how hard would it be for God, who created everything, to rewrite just one line of reality? I know they don't mean any harm, and I'm one of those blind heretics who actually does want to see, but after my eyes have been prayed over many times they're in the same condition as they were before. I think people are trying to be kind, but I now find it annoying.
Next time someone does that, I am going to kindly dismiss them.
I am also, Voyager, because with the money I've spent on blindness technology alone I could use it to manage other responsibilities. To say nothing of a zillion other things I could and would do.
Godzilla, you may be right. Or the theory that they are just wanting to put on a magic show, so they can go tell their friends 'Look what I did!'
Hardyboy here said it right: she never even asked his name. There is no human empathy involved in these situations. It is the blink being the potential object of some magic, which could result in some pretty fantastic crownage or praise or something.
I'd rather go and invent something cool that people use, thanks.
They'll give some more excuses for why it didn't happen, of course. But as I used to tell my daughter when she tried to talk her way out of some trouble she got into, an explanation is not an excuse.
And their version of explanation is pretty wibbledy wobbled as actual explanations go.
But again, these aberrations are not even that common among the Christians. The funny folk like the Benny Hinns and the like, are even referred to as heretics or some other such euphemism by whole sects of Christianity. Frauds perhaps, in my book, unless people just want to show up to see a dancing bear. But heretics? I dono, but what rights do the likes of us have to weigh in on that one?
Nathan, I don't actually know anything about the Bob jones crowd, save their political antics and connections to the Christian Coalition and other orgs spawned of the Fallwellian Explosion. But their apologists always struck me as more of a Conservative Baptist persuasion, which doing a quick look-see on the Internet, purports no modern miracles.
So your local random praying person was probably an aberration, at least she would be among the Southern Baptist types.
I may have your uni confused with another of theirs, they have several big ones around the country acting as PAC funnels for the Right.
It can fail a million times, but all it takes is one success.
Bob
Sure, pray for me on your own time. But for now, get your hand off my head and fuck off out of my personal space.
I have this tendency toward headaches, so I get very prickly when someone invades my miserable space on those occasions. One day when I was going up to my apartment after getting a particularly bracing triple-expresso mocha with that extra bitter edge I love so much, with my head pounding and me looking forward to drugging myself into oblivion to get rid of the pounding migraine I had, this youngish-sounding woman walks up to me and asks if she can give me a healing prayer. I politely declined, but what I thought about later was saying: "I dunno what the hell for, I only have a headache." Or "I'll just take a couple painkillers; you can't do any better than they can." Why I think of these things later on is something I'll never really understand.
I just reviewed this topic.
@Post64 Wayne, you may have gotten what they fondly call a 'blessing in disguise'.
Because, I have it on good anecdotal authority the 72 virgins you were about to inherit before you were sent back were actually 70 pimply-faced video-game-playing cyber geeks who died at 30, having lived in their mommys' basements for the whole of their short, unnatural lives.
This is just like a god or a religion or a answered prayer: they didn't specify what kinda virgin they were talking about, so you got the unexpected, or would have had it not been for a Mormon with a baptism to send you back here.
You got lucky, else you would have had these 72 virgin geeks and been expected to tell stories about the lessons you learned from that answer, and Pollyanna your way through it telling all just how much better the situation is, with you and the 72 geeks, than it would have been with the 72 virgins you might have imagined.
Where past is prologue, an afterlife of so-called fulfilled promises might indeed produce these types of rather unpredictable, somewhat horrifying results.
I strongly disagree Leo. I've only had 2. I'm owed 68.
I do know people do the praying for there own glory, but the person that is really sincere, I believe it is a sign of love, and I permit it and tell them thank you.
If your belief is that strong, and you have the heart to share it, this is truly kind to me.
Gotta feel sorry for these self-styled healer types. It must be really a trying time to accept me at face value just the way I am and they have to go through all this fuss and bother on what is essentially a wish.
You know what I find funny. If God doesn't exist why do athiests care if I
pray to him and spend so much time trying to prove he doesn't exist. If he
really doesn't why wast so much time.
Amen! Smile.
Kind of like worrying over the tooth fairy, but it is there time.
Faithfulwolf I like your concept of religion. You describe what I believe better than I've ever been able to.
My thing is, more than religion, I just don't know what I want to major in. History is very interesting to me, but actually teaching it? I can sort of see myself doing this, but not entirely. At the same time, it is difficult to transfer to another institution, because of two factors really:
First, you have the credits, at least, the majority of them, not transferring over, and secondly, VR has to approve the school. My interests lie more in special education with a concentration in blindness/low vision. But, even if I were to get such a Bachelor's degree, and I guess a teacher's certification, what does that mean? What type of jobs could I have with this? I mean, religion is good, and all, but I'm sort of really stuck at the moment. I just feel like I'm wasting my time; everyone says: "Just pick a major; you can always get a Master's in what you want later." The only problem with this philosophy is that I want my undergraduate degree to be interesting--something I actually enjoy instead of dread. So, sorry to get off topic, but this is predominantly what is on my mind, over religion tonight.
Ah, but this isn't necessarily about choice of college, this is a life thing.
If going to the college you chose works for you, really good.
It doesn't mean you are a Christian.
Exactly.
Basketball and others:
It's a great question, if it's asked honestly. I'm going to assume that you asked it honestly and not out of a hostile nyah nyah nyah attitude as it typicaly gets asked.
If you were Christian in a predominantly Hindu society, with Hidu sects so strongly evangelical and fundamentalist in their beliefs, you also would be interested and speaking about Brahma. You Christians are as atheistic about Brahma as I am. Yu are also as atheistic about Allah as I am. If you lived in an evangelical Hindu culture, they would be wanting Hindu teachings taught in your schools, prayers to Brahma in your schools, and any number of things that you, a Christian, do not want. You would become quite interested in this whole phenomenon - Hinduism, - only because you would be having to navigate around it all the time in your society. You, as a Christian, would have no express hatred for Hindus. You, as a Christian would have Hindu family, Hindu friends, indus at work, Hindus passing out Hindu tracts, Hindus wanting to tell you about their gods and goddesses, and so on. Maybe they would even tell you that because you are a Christian - an atheist to their Hindu gods - that you have no moral compass.
Did you know, Baskeballfreaks, that the Romans considered Jews and Christians to be atheists? They didn't persecute them because of Christ or Yahweh. They persecuted them for having "no gods," for being atheists.
If you are not intellectually elementary, you should be able to perform the above thought experiment and understand why it is atheists do respond to these types of discussions.
Now, I will say this much. Intellectually I may be an atheist, actually an agnostic atheist to be technically correct. But morally I am a humanist. As such, I would have it that you be free to practice openly and in full freedom, which is your natural right in the U.S. and other first world nations. Your holidays, not just the commercialized ones. Whatever you want to do. Yay, clap the Christians. But here comes the difficult part for anyone not more emotionally mature than age 16: that same freedom extends to everyone in your society. Muslims like our friend Faraaz on this site. Theistic spiritual types like Wayne, Agnostic theists / deists, Hindus, pagans and whoever else. That doesn't make everybody right, of course. Not everybody can be right on these things, since their claims are mutually exclusive of one another. Over 40,000 branches of Christianity all by itself. It doesn't mean you have to believe the rest of us are going to heaven. Presumably, you believe we're all going to Hell. Most Christians do. But while you're here, while you're in society, part of being in society is making room for everyone. You can think I'm a fool. Your Bible states that "The fool says in his heart 'there is no God.'" All your apologists repeat this over and over about us. That's your right.
Atheists are a minority. More of a minority than any other group related to gods or lack thereof. Studies show that parents would rather their child turn out a pedophile than turn out an atheist. We are a maligned bunch. Mainly because theistic groups are typically allowed to act like badly-behaved teenagers when it comes to getting along with other groups. Grown-ups realize that getting along doesn't mean you agree. It doesn't mean there's not spirited debate. It doesn't mean you or I aren't challenged in our thinking. You would probably hear less from some of the noisier atheists if some of the noisier religious people also toned it down. Conversations like what come up here? Well, they never come up with Christians like my mother-in-law. She's a Methodist, and they are a pretty mainline bunch. In their presence, I'm not subject to being remanded for how I think. In fact, I haven't yet come completely clean to her about my atheism. It simply isn't an issue. But that's never the case with evangelicals of whatever persuasion: evangelical Christians, evangelical vegans, evangelical animal rights people like PETA, or any others.
And finally, why do we atheists care about or write on these topics? We often were theists, to greater or lesser degrees, at some point. And we know theists, we have loved ones who are theists. Sometimes it clouds things, sometimes not. But however one believes about the predominant religion Christianity, which is 3 billion people strong and owns more weapons and holds more political offices around the world than many midsized nations combined, Christianity dominates. I know your mythology - if you are a fundamentalist - states you are being persecuted. That is simply statistically and logically not the case. The Christians now own the world, just as the Aztecs owned Central America before the Conquistadors. So obviously, atheists will have an opinion on what the predomant, powerful, supermajority religion is up to. You Christians would too, if the predominant, powerful, supermajority religion wer Hinduism or some other religion. Those with an elementary education or greater will be able to perform this thought experiment and understand why we might interject, or at least read, on these types of topics. haven't Christians responded well enough to Wiccan and pagan topics? It's a free Internet, this site is set up with loose rulings on these things, and so they have a right to do so.
For the record, I am not out to convert you or anyone. I know this is hard for theists to understand, but I did not convert, I realized. I realized what I was, then performed enough thought experiments to prove to myself I didn't actually believe any of it. I didn't have a "born again" atheist experience. So how could I convert you to me? And atheism only describes the lack of something, based on statistical and relative probability. if we were in conversation, you might feel I was attempting to make you think humanistically, something your church rejects. What is humanism? Discussed in another thread, but it's in general moral philosophies that place human beings above dogmas, creeds, and belief systems; a striving to provide the most human well-being for the greatest number of people. Again, I understand how and why your church rejects this. I was a young man in the 1980s and early 90s, the era of Josh McDowell and others, strong apologists for what you believe, and strong counterapologists to anything human-centric.
If your question was asked in good faith, I hope this is food for thought.
To add to Leos last post... From personal experience, I can say that growing up
atheist in the south wasn't easy. the general culture rejects you for who and
what you are, tells you that because you are an atheist, you are not
trustworthy, that you're more likely to be a criminal, that your less desirable by
most parents for their children to marry than gays, or child abusers, or
someone of another race. Being told time and time again that you do not belong
changes you. At first its depressing, then comes the anger. then comes the
realization that you can speak out and stand up for yourself, your beliefs... That
you don't have to take people comparing you to murderers and people that rape
children lying down.
Its really easy to get along in this world, when you are the majority religion, but
the statistics have proven time and time again, that having no religion is just
too huge a crime for most people to cope with.
One last thought. I know many christians don't think like this. But I know many
that do. As a non christian, i'm constantly expected to keep my nose down, to
go along to get along, and to let people tell me how I should think and feel.
You wouldn't except a society that rejects one of the fundamental foundations
of who you are as a person with out trying to defend yourself. Why should I?
Because my beliefs are inferior? Because i'm damned to hell anyway?
I'm sorry, but I can't go quietly.
Basketball's question really is self illustrating of the general attitude people
have relating to atheists.
I think a person that isn't willing or able to stand up for there belief doesn't believe it well enough and should probably set down and examin why they think as they do.
Or, say they think that way.
Believing, and knowing why you do, seems to make life easier for you, because you are a confident person.
We are allowed in this country to express and be what we feel, so a person that is wishy washy doesn't need to be, they just need to decide.
Now, once you decide, it is a personal thing, and the world isn't wrong because they don't agree.
It is human to want others to believe as you do though.
Wayne, I agree that it is not wrong to believe differently, but I think it is very
wrong to use ones religion in a political sense to oppress others. I think its
wrong to create an environment where the super majority can systematically
abuse the religious freedoms of the minorities. We're not all christian, this
country was not founded christian, regardless of what the texas history books
may say, and sadly what many believe to this day... We need to become much
more secular as a group, and get back to real history. this is the biggest
problem I see with the christian super majority. Because they believe abortion
is wrong, for example. they think they have the right to dictate how the
minority lives.
for the most part, I see religion the way most people see their dicks. keep it in
your pants and you solve a lot more problems. I mean, who's heard of an
atheist war, or atheist crusades, or atheists picketing funerals, passing laws to
make atheistic practices mandatory, etc...
As an atheist, I may make logical arguments for why one should not believe,
and I may advocate for the strong separation of church and state, under god
being removed from the pledge, I even believe churches should not be tax
exempt money fountains for those who fool the gullible. But those things aside,
i'm not going to tell someone how they can and can't privately worship. If I had
children, i'd do my best to show them, at a rational age, all the information
available about all world religions, teach them about agnosticism and atheism
as systems of philosophy and after they understand those are not religions,
they'd be able to make what ever choice they saw fit.
Never the less, believing in something, while not logical, and in some cases bad,
is not bad in all cases. If a religion advocates vile things how ever. Why stand
back and just say Uh, sure. that's fine. Go ahead.
Wow, to think that this board started so long ago. I'm just interested in a degree. But you gys can keep debating amongst yourselves. Just because you're an Atheist doesn't mean that people should treat you differently, but it happens anyway.
I did say you didn't have to be Christian to attend such a place.
However, when you do, you will be taught the Christian way.
If all you wanted to do was seek a degree, you could have looked other places, or even done it online.
You can't live in a sheep camp, and not smell, hear, and get wool on you. You are in the sheep camp, and when we teach you math, science, or whatever, you will hear about sheep too.
If the Christian university passes a rule that states, all students much attend services, you'll attend.
James, I hear your point, but I don't have a solution.
I don't think the Christians have all the control you give them, but that is how you view it, so who am I to tell you differently.
We are free to be free thinkers, and again, if you believe in something, you should stand for it, or stop saying you do.
If Atheist is your thing, stand up!
About that degree you mentioned. You're going to one of the most
disreputable and unaccredited colleges in the country. Everyone knows what
liberty university is, what it does and why it does it. So, unless you plan on
working in a church or at Answers in Genesis, or the Institute for Creationist
Research, both of which are scientifically debunked institutions that no one
trusts, I'm afraid your degree is going to be worth just slightly more than the
paper its printed on.
Lets say you get an english degree and you want to teach English at a high
school. So you apply for a job. Well, several other people applied for that same
job, and they have degrees from universities that are in good standing and have
good reputations as nonbiased centers for higher learning. They're also
accredited. So guess what, you don't get that job. They get that job because
they went to Iowa State or Amherst College or something.
Sorry, but its the harsh reality of going to schools like Liberty. No one trusts
them, and they don't really do anything to try to be more trustworthy.
Oh, and Wayne, everything that James said is easily demonstrable. Want
some easy to find evidence? Go to google and type in three little words, "war on
christmas" then sit back and watch the evidence pile up on your computer
screen. Still not enough, look up why we have "In God We Trust" as our motto
rather than "E Pluribus Unum". Pro tip, its not cuz one is english and rednecks
can pronounce it. Its cuz of those damn godless commies. Which, I can tell you
from personal experience, you may very well get called if you ever suggest it
should be changed back. still not enough evidence though, try watching the
video records of the Texas Board Of Education's meetings when they discuss
textbooks. If you know anything about science, it will absolutely frighten you.
So yes Wayne, though you may not think it, when a group has a seventy-five
percent majority of the population, that group is in control of just about
everything.
This won't sound right, but here goes.
If I looked up all the things you told me and found them to be true, I'd not mind.
While I'm not a Christian, I don't mind the God, so to speak, in the world, and think it is a good thing.
Now, me personally, will not attempt to control you, and again, think you should stand up for your beliefs.
So you don't mind that certain christian representatives are trying to force the
publishers of Texas textbooks to publish books teaching creationism on an equal
standing with evolution, or a completely inaccurate version of American history
that puts far more emphasis on the founding fathers and much less on slavery
and later changes such as women's sufferage? You think that's a good thing?
Oh, and did I mention that publishers of textbooks usually only publish the
Texas version so they can cut down on costs? So what the texas board decides,
is almost garranteed to be taught in states from Louisiana to Michigan to Maine
to Washington. You think that's a good thing?
You think its a good thing that in seven states Atheists are prohibited by law
from holding public office? And yes, people still try to have this law enforced.
You think its a good thing that religious parents are allowed, in many states,
to home school their child without being required to teach them anything at all?
These are good things in your opinion? I'm sorry Wayne, but how much of an
idiot do you have to be to think that? Cuz you're either stupid or ignorant. Either
you know this stuff goes on and are too stupid to be upset by it, or you are
ignorant of the facts.
There are many things I don't like in this world. Some of them happen to be things that Atheist do, or people professing to be so as well.
My not minding the God, in the world, has nothing to do with abuses people make of it, and abuses the people make of it who don't want the God in the world.
I'll also add, 100% of the 70% that is controlling as you suggest, don't agree with all the things you stated are wrong.
But weather they agree or not, they passively accept, because they have the
fear of god in them. Come on, lets be realistic. Most christians have a
Stockholm syndrome like love for god. that's not a good thing, its absolutely
terrifying. If you don't agree, and think these practices are wrong, stand up.
Say no. If you have free will, according to "god" then he should forgive you.
After all, catholics that fuck alter boys with out consent make it to heaven. I'd
say you've got a rather good chance. Its one thing to agree with these ideas in
theory, but its another to actually stand up and prove you mean what you say.
People can say, or do anything when its politically expedient to do so. Being
wishy washy and giving passive reassurance that what they do is ok, will not fix
the problems.
I do have a seriously well, serious question. how is god existing a good thing?
Particularly the christian, jewish, or muslim god? By any moral standard, the
things god does are evil. But I can't get an honest answer about this with out
use of logical fallacy and double think to excuse the problem.
In reply to the OP.
I do agree with cody about your degree though. Unless you're going to be
working for a hardcore right wing christian institution, your degree is more
worthless than even the most worthless degree from an accredited university.
The problem as I see it, and this isn't a Christian problem alone, is people.
Lets take the rule of home educating your child.
I can see how that is dead wrong, and I'm sure Bishop X knows it is wrong, but bishop X will pass that stupid law, because he/she doesn't give a damn about the stupid. He/her kids will be educated properly.
There is no law saying you have to raise your kids uneducated, it is the people deciding this.
I stand up and say it is wrong, and I can still believe in God. Belief in God isn't the complete and hole reason people decide to be ignorant.
You need some slaves to work your plantation, you open the Bible and find something to make it right, because you are a Christian, and have to go by the book.
How a person decide to use the religion is the problem, not the religion,or God.
I guess I am what the daughter and her friends call a soft atheist. I find some of the antitheistic tredns to be as evangelical as the evangelical Christians. Now, I am a skeptic, I do base my findings on impirical evidence, and I do ask the tough questions. Not just of Christians, but other religious people like the MRAs and feminists. I'm reasonably comfortable with the fact that I can get called a misogynist, a white night, pussy whipped, cold and unfeeling, too sympathetic, an infidel, and so on. This is because I know all these worthless names are just knee-jerk responses from people who have no relevant answers.
I think Christians are right to challenge some of the antitheistic claims, make by people like Richard Dawkins and Rebecca Watson. I actually concede many of their claims. But for me, atheism is merely an intellectual position. Morality-wise, as a secular humanist, I see the importance of fostering the environment where Christians and others can practice openly. In so doing I defy their persecution complex mythology, but that's the way these things go when dealing in reality and nothing else. I think diversity is not a "gray" area: it's a kaleidoscope. If protestants, Catholics, Pentecostals and others can practice openly, so can Wiccans, Jews, Muslims, and so forth. It is tough when dealing with some of the orthodox, no matter their orthodoxy, because they are morally the equivalent of teenagers, extremely cliquish and in-group-centric. It is that framework that I object to.
Now I would assume any Christian who wants to can post to an atheistic or rationalist topic on this site. This isn't a Christian forum, nor is it AtheistNexus or ExChristian.net. In fact, having people of different persuasions post to the same topic prevents the dreaded echo chamber effect which is so intellectually and morally stunting. I don't think a rationalist would expect a Christian to modify their beliefs. Perhaps their behavior, for some of them. But presumably, if you're evangelical, you believe one such as I am is headed for Hell. Down "the primrose path," I believe the expression is, for those of us who try and lead honorable moral lives but outside of a religious matrix. I don't even think it's hate if you express that. Distateful to some of us, perhaps. Abusive if directed at underage children. But not if you just think that, or express that on an Internet forum. It's also not hate when an atheist challeges the very concept of gods at all, or asks how you can be sure you've selected the right one. The terms 'hate' and 'bully' have gotten way out of proportion. But just because you or I have to behave in a civil manner online and offline, doesn't mean we have to 'agree' with everything. I don't agree at all with the psychic people who frequent some of the bars I visit. And they have at least as much trouble with us rationalists as the Christians do. But, in a common setting, we all have to behave ourselves and get along civilly. That doesn't mean agree, and that doesn't mean we can't debate or even argue. Any adult human being with fully emergent human properties understand this. The problem with many of these echo chambers in religions and elsewhere is the stunted natures that are produced: people in churches or on Tumblr or at university in the gendered studies groups, who imagine the entire world is supposed to think just like them or not speak at all. In reality, humanity doesn't even function that way.
Why, just last night: my Christian wife was telling me over dinner how she and one of her coworkers can now express themselves to each other in that way, because they're both "out" to each other, can talk about praying for clients and such. Here I am, an atheist, sitting there in full and total agreement with what She's saying. I appreciate the times when I can be "out" in real life with common people. Even in tolerant Oregon, atheists are relatively few. Lots of nonreligious but many of them spiritual types, and find atheists at least as distasteful as many evangelicals do. So as a human being, one who understands the emergent need for community, I can be no less than fully supportive of Her in that situation, even though I see no evidence for the god of the Abrahamic traditions, and even though when they pray I see no evidence for any responses that couldn't reasonably be attributed to random chance. But it's possible to believe what you believe, or not believe, for some of us, and still support others' humanity. The black-and-white one-dimensional thinking that many of these groups create is a problem.
But yes, Christians, we atheists will continue to read your topics, and even post on them with questions. Believe it or not, your religion develops over time. And for some of us who know a great many theists, it's instructive to see "how the other half lives," and what is changing. It's not hate to disagree with you, it's not hate or misogyny or white knight or racist or any other juvenile name for all of us to have honest questions and look for honest answers. I think you can tell the difference between those of us like that and the blow hards that argue just to argue. I know I can.
While I don't disagree with Leo that certain antitheist positions are equally
dogmatic, I do think there is a difference in the end result. And as the old
saying goes, the ends must be considered when judging the means.
But, and I think Leo alluded to this, how many times have you seen a
sentence like "please only christian responses" in a board post on this site? Now
how many times have you seen, "Please only atheist responses". I'm willing to
bet its somewhere around dozens for the former and hovering somewhere
around zero for the latter. That is a symptom of the religion. They don't want
anything in their world challenged. That extends all the way up from board
posts about who can deepthroat jesus the best, right up to who gets to be tax
exempt and whether or not its discrimination to say that you can't discriminate
based on sexual preference.
As for Wayne, I think you're just desperately trying to find a way that you can
do nothing and still look like you're important enough to be paid attention to.
You want to be listened to as if you have something worthwhile, but you're not
actually willing to put anything on the line. I'd be willing to bet that you'd go
along with whatever the majority opinion is. In fact I've seen you do it on a
number of occasions. You tweek your stance just enough that it seems like
you're different, but you really just swim blissfully along with the stream. The
sad part is that people actually think you intelligent for it.
I'll agree with you about the please Christians only.
I also think it needs respect, if a person is trying to have a discussion related to Christians, and not an attack on there beliefs. It is not good to have to defend your position everytime you wish to discuss something related to others that share your views, hobby, interest.
When you attack them every time, it looks as if you are doing the exact same thing you accuse them of.
The reason you don't have to put an Atheist only on your topics, is because you invite the debate. Next, if you are discussing something Atheist related, and I've not noticed that, Christians should leave you alone unless they have something to add to your discussion.
An example of this will be when people wish to discuss Android related apps, programs, and devices. Why should users of Apple products jump on that board to say Android products suck, and anyone using them is ignorant?
Now, as to what I go along with, you'll also notice I disagree with things.
I don't go along to get along, I stand up for what I believe in, even if that rubs others wrong.
My beliefs are based on experience, reading, and watching things happen in my life and around me.
Because it that, you never have seen me say I'm a Christian.
If I went along, I'd not be willing to state that fact on a board topic.
I am willing to see another point of view, but when I'm not convinced that point of view changes my belief, I say so.
The "respect my believes" plea is nothing more than insecurity. Christians are scared shitless that someone's gonna prove their faith wrong, so they get all angry and defensive. It's really rather commical.
It is insecurity, if used each timeyou put something out that you know will cause debate you don't wish to have taken out and examined.
It is polite when someone is trying to discuss something with other like minded people.
I'd not put it there, but people do. I'd just ignore the post that were argumentive, and continue my topic. Un Christian.
That's my point. They're saying, in effect, "don't challenge my beliefs because I'm afraid of what you might reveal about them."
Shit happens.
Being afraid of challenge is nothing more than a sign that you're stance is
weak. If christians really had faith in their God, they wouldn't care about being
challenged. I don't care about being challenged because I'm confident in my
stance. It comes with the territory when no theist has ever presented an
argument you couldn't defeat with little effort.
Wayne, the problem with your methods is not that you won't stand up for
your beliefs, its that you don't state your beliefs in such a way that people
would take notice. You capitulate. Capitulation is a good way to make yourself
look nice, but it does nothing for actual intellectualism. Its whitewash. Nothing
more.
I have a suggestion for Christians who only want to hear from their own: post your topic
on ChristianForums.com or a similar forum. Rest assured, there are monitors there
keeping it Christian-safe, and keeping triggers for evangelicals to a minimum. Also rest
assured that atheists such as I am are not on those websites. I have, as usual, taken my
own advice. I belong to a couple forums, one for atheists in interfaith marriages, and one
where people are recovering from the effects of religion: women and men dealing with
nightmares about Hell, etc. Christians are restricted from posting in some places there
because for some of the suffering, they experience pretty awful autonomic responses to
certain Christianese trigger words and phrases. I don't even post in parts of that site
because, while I have had my own problems, they don't seem as bad as theirs. I.mainly
respond with sympathy, and where asked for, rational / scientific / historical responses,
leaving the theology to the ex-missionaries, ex-pastors, etc. I did not get all but hurt and
upset when told by a pagan I was being too atheistic on one of their topics. As an atheist,
it doesn't bother me that I don't have posting privileges on their spiritual boards.
But all of us on this site know this site is largely unmoderated which makes it very
attractive. But if hearing an atheistic response makes your stomach tight, your heart race,
your hands clammy; if you suffered abuse at the hands of atheists who told you that
abuse was supposed to make you rational; if you have nightmares about dying and simply
blipping out of existence, then by all means. Take your posts to a website where they
understand your current situation, make their intentions clear in that regard, and provide
you with the sort of protection you need to get on with your life. On the other hand, if
you're just a little upset because not everyone will echo what you think? Time to grow up,
kid.
Just a little perspective,
Leo
I don’t have a burning need to convert anyone to my belief system. I state it, and I stand on it, but I’m not a preacher.
I’ve spent much time deciding what I do and don’t think, or believe, so always sticking my belief in to a topic that isn’t talking about that specifically, is a waste of my time.
I am what I am, and my speech, and writing reflects this.
Every time I see Atheist, doesn’t make me want to jump in there and tell you you’re going to hell yesterday, and you’re flat out wrong, and whatever. Be as you are, discuss it as you want.
Now, on a topic like this one, we are talking about it, so I’m going to say.
Really, thought Liberty was accredited? If it wasn't, then how can it award degrees?
Colleges, or institutions can award any certificates they wish. There is no law that says they must be.
I don't know if your college is credited or not. I'd check that maybe.
I'd think it was, due to it's size.
I did some checking.
This is actually a really lovely university Nathan. I hope you use all the things available to you.
Liberty University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award associate, bachelor, master, specialist and other things.
It has a large law school.
enrollment is really large and something like 90,000 people study through it online.
They've got some top notch sports teams even.
So, it looks to me to be a really school.
All degrees are subject to the person looking at them acceptance.
A degree from an ivy league school is suppose to get you better money then others, but this school doesn't look to be a slouch.
Many Christian and other schools are accredited. Wayne's right, it's a large school, and it
looks like he did the homework for you on this one.
Well, it kept coming up how his degree wasn't going to be worth the paper it was written on.
I got interested if that was so, or just bias against the place due to is being Christian.
That bias, at least speaking for myself, has more to do with the fundamentalist nature of
the place. The daughter, for a time, thought she wanted to go to a fundamentalist Bible
college for a year. I would not stand for it, because it was not accredited. The website had
a rather manstruative rant against accreditation. Frankly, I loathe a whiny, entitled
mentality, and that is what this guy exhibited. "You should just accept us, even though we
can't meet standards, in fact, we're really just too good for your standards." I told her this
had nothing to do with a difference of faith; I am simply unable to have an ounce of
respect for men who are abject failures, then parade that failure around all over the place
and want us all to make excuses for him. There are lots of Christian colleges and
universities, even here in Portland, who are accreditted. But, after that incident, I did a
little research. Seems that the more fundamentalist, the more the entitlement mentality
about how we should support their failure to get accreditted. I didn't exhibit the
entitlement nonsense when I WENT to college. And while these get all butthurt and upset
about books with beliefs different from their own, I couldn't read my own textbooks. I
didn't do any whining, so I saw no conceivable reason for me to listen to theirs about why
their lied was so unfair and being accreditted was just too hard and inconvenient.
So if Nathan's school is different, sounds like it is, kudos to them.
Have a look at Bob Jones University and their handbook. Most anal rules ever! I'd rather starve than attend.
It appears to be pretty education based.They do say they stand on Christian values, so you'll not find drinking parties and such, but education seems to be the push, not God.
They've got a wide range of programs, along with a minister study, can't think of the name for that right now.
Lots of things for a student to do as well. Bike trails, sports, you name it.
"god" forbid you get raped at either of those institutions though, you'll be forced
to apologize to your rapist, etc, etc, etc. Because for women that attend, if they
were raped, they were at fault.
That sort of mentality sets my teeth on edge.
Alright, I've checked this thing out, and this board looks fairly interesting, so I'm going to add my two cents.
As far as evangelists, missionaries, and the like not accepting people with disabilities, you're right in a lot of aspects. Blindness is a curse, according to some people, such as those who are involved in the Potters' House congregations, so I understand your problem there.
As far as the Christians Vs. Atheist Vs. Antitheist debate, I can't prove to you that God exists, nor can you prove to me that God doesn't exist. I won't go into preaching about why I think God exists and all that, but I will say that we've all got some different points of view on life, and it is interesting. I guess I've become a little more open when it comes to being challenged concerning my beliefs as a Christian, and I do believe that the Atheists who ask the tough questions have a right to have answers to those questions. In short, I am a Christian, and I believe in God's existence, but if some of you don't believe that, and you're confident in your set of beliefs, then go with it! Rock on.
Atheism isn't a belief. Its a rejection of a belief based on lack of evidence. I
don't believe there is no God. I know that you have failed to prove god's
existence to me. Antitheism believes there is no god. But saying "you can't
prove there isn't a god" as support for your argument is silly. You're saying that
someone can't prove a negative. That's like saying the sky is blue. Its a known
fact. You could actually prove that your God exists. If you have any evidence for
it. I doubt you do though.
Well Michael there are a lot of us nontheists of one form or another who are in interfaith relationships. I'll be honest, my ethics are from a humanist point of view. I'm less concerned with changing someone's mind about gods, than I am with humans treating each other well. This is why I tend to associate with some nontheist organizations and not others. If I were a Christian, the fundamentalists would call my way "double-minded".
But, the sky isn't blue. Smile.
If we use the sky as are bases, it is ever changing, and you can't put your finger on why exactly, so you accept it on faith value that the sun will rise in the morning.
Why not the same for God?
There are so many questions human can not answer, nor prove.
So, we are at a check mate. You can't prove exactly there is no God, and why some people receive blessings, and we can't explain why it works.
Wayne, science has proven how weather patterns work, why the sky is blue,
etc. so your argument has no standing.
And I have faith that my right knee will hurt when I stand up, because it has hurt the past several times I've stood up. That's not the same kind of faith that theists have. I have a logical conclusion based on past experiences.
Well Wayne, I get what you're saying. I'm not being argumentative here, but let's say that we assert an event is caused by a god, whatever he or she or it may look like. Now you yourself say you're not a Christian, and you have been quite eloquent as to what your god looks like: it is love. The Christian god is also explained, the American evangelical brand, or the Bishop Spong brand, or what have you. The nontheistic argument doesn't posit that there isn't one. It's just stating we can't know which one it would be, if any of the known deities supported by social and cultural norms. Add to that, people are statistically likely to adopt the deity of their native culture.
Especially if we anthropomorphize the deity, it would have attributes. Just like there is only one Wayne, and one Michael, we can't give totally opposite attributes when describing you. We can't say that you are both a thief and an honest person: both a congenial guy and totally sardonic.
And therein lies the problem with a theistic argument. Most try to communicate to nontheist types as though they were talking about an amorphous deity, but in reality they have a very specific concept of a god.
And here's something more: I remember the Wife telling me She doesn't care about the political connections of Christianity, She would remain a Christian if there were no other Christians around anywhere. Well, that's honorable. But to depersonalize it a bit, and hopefully shed light on our perspective:
So a Christian would remain so even if there were no others. That is because the Christian believes that the Christian god, especially the variant that is a construct of their particular branch of Christianity, actually exists. In fact, we could infer that a Christian might even think Christianity is true, even if there are no Christians anywhere around, and haven't been for hundreds, or even thousands, of years.
Now if that is true, that could equally be true of any deity humans have written or spoken about, yes? So followers of Horace could claim that even though Horace has not received worship for thousands of years, that doesn't make Horace any less real. I know some who have adopted pre-Christian European beliefs, as part of a path to reconnecting with our native roots. Someone said to me, "Leo, just because people haven't Honored Odin as the Wise Father, or Thor the Hunter, that doesn't mean Odin and Thor aren't out there waiting for us."
You know what's interesting: If you're white, and have entertained Christianity in any serious fashin, you have the "wishy-washy" ones from the previous religions to thank. The real martyrs of those peoples were killed by Clovis and Charlemagne rather than convert. So if you're an evangelical, and afraid of being wishy-washy or going down a slippery slope, your ancestors in the faith already were. That's why you're still here, and the ones who took their stand for the old European gods were martyred. History, religious history included, always being written from the victor's point of view, you naturally would not see those people as "martyrs" because they weren't of your current faith.
But, if you as a Christian, believe that Christianity would be true even without any Christians around, then it logically follows that pre-Christian old-world European religions would equally have a chance at being true even though they have not had followers in over a thousand years. Your apologists talk about martyrs now, and how that makes your god true.
Read the accounts of Clovis and of Charlemagne: Charlemagne felled the trees revered by the Saxons, and threatened the Saxons with the same fate if they did not convert. The "wishy-washy" ones did, became Christians, and spawned the rest of us. The ones "really willing to stand for their beliefs" died that day. Are their gods any less real? After all, using the same argument, just because nobody around hasn't followed these gods for over a thousand years, doesn't make these gods any less real.
Now if Muslims invaded the West just as the Romans and the Roman church did, and gave Western Christians the same ultimatum that Christian armies gave Saxons and other Europeans, you would find some who would rather convert than die or be thrown off their lands to wander the fallows. But Others would be martyred for Christianity. If Islam became the majority religion as Christianity now is, and then history were written from the victor's point of view, as it now is, do you think Christians would be written up as martyrs? Where do you read about your European ancestors who were martyrs of the pre-Christian religions? And then the Muslim apologists could do as yor evangelical Christian ones now do: posit that because Islam has swept the world, and acquired converts from every nation and land, that makes Islam true. And because there have been Muslim martyrs, that makes Islam true. All the while, the martyrs for Christianity during this muslim conquest would be ignored by the same apologists.
After all, during Roman times, many people were killed for not worshipping the Emperor, not just Christians. And the martyrdom tales for Christianity have been distorted well out of proportion, with no third-party corroborative sources. Yet for the European martyrs of pre-Christian religions, we have letters to the Pope from their killers.
It is this conundrum that leaves a lot of us nontheistic people shaking our collective heads.
If you're white, what our collective ancestors did to native African and American peoples, we had done to ourselves several hundred years prior, and because our ancestors believed the narrative from the victor in our own devastation, we repeated that narrative across the globe. That doesn't make the narrative any more accurate or valid. It simply makes it repeated, and us first the victim early on, and then the one who repeats the cycle several hundred years ago. None of this narrative has anything actual to do with gods. It is from that where some of us conclude the entire god concept appears to be man-made. After all, if you are a Christian, and would remain so even if there were no Christians to be found anywhere, and if you believe the Christian god would be the one true god even if there were no followers for hundreds or thousands of years, then it logically follows the same could be said of every single religion whose empire has been vanquished, and whose god or gods now lie in state, either in folktales or ruins.
No James, the sky changes and is not blue always. Today outside my sky is gray actually. It has some white in it, but no blue at all.
Leo, I can't argue the Christian God, because you are right, I am not Christian, but I can argue that science has not proven without a doubt there isn't a God.
What if I described God as the governing force that seems to control the world.
God is the reason the sun rises, the flowers grow, the seasons change.
Nature?
Humans have a need to know everything, and they can't.
Doctors are at a loss why in a hostital room people have prayed, and the patient has actually healed. Mind control, or God?
I'll keep my God and concept. Until someone can prove to me why some things happen humans can't explain, I'll call it God.
There is also the spiritual side, or feeling of God I enjoy. I have no need to live my life without it, so trying to prove it doesn't exist seems fruitless to me.
I hear you. I sometimes wonder hade I been in a different environment, might I have adopted a path similar to yours.
Ah, yeah, I didn't think you were being quite as pedantic about this as it turns
out you are. But my point still stands that science for the most part has
explained why the sky does what it does. the rest of your arguments boil down
to correlation, not causation, so well. I can't quite understand them as
defending or really proving god exists. you're just saying these things appear
to be related, so they are. From a logical perspective, I can't understand these
arguments. Its a lot like saying 2 plus 2 can equal 22 just because you can
write two twos side by side. Its simply that kind of thinking I just can't wrap my
head around. Suppose it also helps that I don't need to know every answer, and
that I don't see any problem with saying I don't know. Wayne, i'm not saying
this applies to you, but i've noticed a lot of people take the easier path of just
saying "god works in mysterious ways." Simply, because it stops them from
needing to think. they've embraced a comfortable fairy tail, and it gives them all
they need.
where as for me, saying there is a god creates hundreds more questions that
simply can't be answered. that's no comfort to me, particularly when i'm being
told I should dedicate my life to something we can't conclusively prove, just on
the off chance it may exist.
Its interesting how differently people approach these kinds of problems.
It's a conundrum. If a god doesn't exist, then why are we here? If a god does exist,then how can we prove it? Maybe Gertrude Stein was right. There is no answer. That's the answer.
sigh, I'm sorry, but I really wish people would attempt to understand science
before they try to argue with it.
Wayne, you're an idiot, the sky is always blue. The part of it you see might be
slightly grey or red or even green, but that is the clouds, not the sky. The clouds
are in the sky, they are not the sky. The sky, because of light refraction, is
always blue. Always, without exception, period. Also, the sun will rise tomorrow,
without exception, because the earth is revolving, and that's how it works. Its
simple geometry, its not a miracle. It may seem like a miracle to you, but if you
actually took the time to understand it, its very simple.
As for your other arguments, there is no statistical evidence that prayer
works. If it did, you wouldn't need doctors or hospitals. And your claim of a
patient being in a hospital room, then someone praying, and they're suddenly
better, never happened. If that ever happened Wayne, every single news source
would be reporting it for months. We'd have people following that healed person
around trying to get interviews.
Now, there are people who have been in the hospital, getting treatment, and
then someone prayed, and after a while they got better. And I'm pretty sure
Wayne, that if you think really hard about that, you'll figure out why that
happened. I'll help, the key is in the phrase, "getting treatment". Use your
braincells Wayne, they're you're friend.
Now then, unless you have any more idiotic science mistakes you'd like to
make, please just shut up. I can't always be here to explain to people why they
should stop listening to you. Honestly, I don't know why they still are after all
the times I've proven you wrong, of which I've lost count.
One minor correction:
The sky on earth is always blue, because of the water vapor in the atmosphere, and as Cody said, the light refracting through it.
On another planet, the sky would be red or pink, or maybe even orange, depending on the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
I don't know why meteorology and astronomy are such remote subjects to most people. I tend to agree with Dan Carlin, though he talks of history, in that things are remote to people because they can't personalize it.
There is a humanist minister, Michael Dowd. He's married to a biologist. But he separates the narrative into "day language" and "night language," the day language being the scientific and rational terms we use to describe our environment, and the night language being the narrative we use as a storytelling species to make that day language sit with us. The trouble with us cientific rational types, and I are one and raised a daughter to boot, is we have difficulty putting rational ideas into this "night language" form which all human beings have evolved to assimilate more easily. We can't change the fact that we evolved as a storytelling species, any more than we can change the fact that we spend most of our brain's activity on interpersonal relationships. A few of us with a scientific or engineering bent are the exceptions to the rule.
But Cody, I'm singling you out, maybe picking on you a little bit here: Someone like you, if I understand your qualifications, is a writer, a professional communicator. You're not doing engineering or science all day long, except the problem-solving required to transmit ideas. Now I know you love the sciences, and I love that: I wish more nonscientific nonengineering people were like this. But people like you are the ones who could radically change secularism of the future, by finding a way to solve the problem of "night language." If people like you find a narrative way to express rational ideas in a form that human beings evolved to best absorb it, a lot more people will take us seriously. Take it from a failure, Cody. I raised a daughter, and the atheists of my generation were more of a scientific and engineering background. She, and even some of her friends, have said: "What you say makes sense, but there's no stories, or deeper meaning." Now that's an oversimplification from a pack of late teens early 20s. But you and I cannot escape the fact that humans evolved as storytelling, and story-listening animals. We can't avoid this any more than Puritanical types can avoid the fact we evolved as sexual creatures. My mistake was to counter the story narrative of the surrounding Christianity with an appeal to reason and rational thought. That wasn't all wrong, but what if there was along with that rational thought, a narrative? What if there was "nightlanguage" to describe the natural world?
I get that I can't describe ratios and equations, or the revolution of the earth around the sun, in a story. I can't. But probably a writer or professional communicator can.
I'll tell you something else: I've been listening to Jerry DeWitt as of late. He has no scientific background at all, he's a former Ptentecostal preacher now atheist. But he communicates in a way average people can understand, and he does so in a very human fashion. It sounds shallow to say this, but I felt, well, affirmed when listening to him. I've spent so many years, decades in fact, surrounded by people who, like myself, come from a scientific or engineering background, and we all talk about things in completely rational "day language" terms. The "hole" or "void" that theists talk about, can be best explained by my generation's failure to provide night language which complements the day language of rational discourse. It may not be so now, but we used to say religious people take humanities and the arts, while atheists are in science and engineering. Yes, there are exceptions. But in large part that was true, and see what we've got now. Nothing but back and forth debates and apologetics. Who has the appeal to night language? What if some professional communicator could create night language for the evolution of our species, or for the universe, in as compelling a fashion as the way people tell Bible stories to kids? My daughter got as much Bill Nai the Science Guy as anyone else, was watching Magic Schoolbus at Age 2. All kinds of stuff like that, but none of it had quite the narrative to really explain some humanistic and science concepts for origins as theists have.
Here is an example of how you and I would respond differently, and I think you as a professional communicator could do a much better job:
My daughter was about 4. She and I were outside, the moon must have been full. She said to me, "Daddy! The moon looks like a big ball! I wish you could reach up and grab it for me so I could play with it!" We talked about it for awhile, laughed, and pretended like we could do it. But then she got to asking how and why the moon is where it is, and what it's made of, what the Sunday school teacher or someone else's mom might have said. So I explained to her, as best I could at her level, what a moon actually is, why it looks pretty, and where it is. I even told her that people had gone there, come back, and brought rocks. But she said, "Dad, that's so boring" or something like that.
If you created a "night language" narrative to communicate the same thing, but in a way that exploits our evolved appetite for a good story, we'll be able to communicate our ideas a lot further. You're looking at someone right here who knows he went wrong in this area. Oh sure, I could pull the juvenile trick and claim it's society, or the surrounding culture, marital pressures, and the like. But when we atheists get together at my local meetup, most of us are my age range and up. The youngers have their own, though of course they'd be most welcome to ours. But what comes up a lot is this chasm: a lot of midlife engineering and science types who have failed to recognize the obvious fact that we as humans have an amazing appetite for stories. Could someone like you come up with a narrative to describe how rainbows work to most people? Because the daughter and friends had heard both the Biblical and the common Native American narratives for the origin of rainbows. My explanation of how light comes through, and isn't that amazing that you can see, interpret and understand that light, and your mind creates artwork out of it, ... they found boring. No wonder that by day, though they may approach a nontheistic point of view at times, by night, they are as tightly theistic as their mothers, and the teachers who knew how to tell stories a lot better than their boring old science and engineering relatives. If we had a nighttime language for this stuff, we could have new stories for bedtime with kids. Adults too, would gravitate to understanding some of these concepts better. People like Michael Dowd and Jerry DeWitt communicate in ways to me that I have never understood looking at diagrams, reading science texts, solving problems, and so forth. And I solve problems for a living, and often as part of my volunteer activities, that part of my brain gets exercised. And I'm the type of person who loves that stuff. But like it or not, I'm a story-listening and storytelling animal, as my daughter is, as countless thousands of generations before us have been. And as a rationalist, I've behaved like a Victorian sex prude -- not about sex, of course, but about narrative. Who wants to grow up believing they're supposed to save their "night language" for church, or for the movie theater? My generation of engineers and scientists imposed a storytelling chastity belt. Professional communicators who love science are our way to freedom. I think we've gone way off course to deny the basic human appetite for the "night language".
Leo, what you're looking for already exists. There's lots of beautiful art made
with science. People have taken science lectures and made them into
symphonies. Literal symphonies. There is an entire book, the title of which
escapes me now, full of nothing but atheists writing essays about the awe they
feel when discussing atheism and science. The list goes on and on. People are
making science interesting all the time, and history, and english, and literature,
and math and a bunch of other subjects. Its been done for years now.
And yes, the sky on other planets is different colors. Ours happens to be blue
because our atmosphere has a lot of water in it. Water makes things look blue.
That's good to know. I'd love to see a Carl Sagan for kids.
That material is out there, I'll take your word for it and go look. But, maybe not you, but many of us from the sciences and engineering fields for too long have imposed this "stories are for theists" type attitude, except for fiction of course. I read the daughter loads of fiction at bedtime. I now wish I had had night language narrative that was nonfiction which I could have read to her. It's possibly been more of an attitude thing than anything else, from my generation and older.
Read Jane Goodall's books, they're on Bard. In the notes, she describes how scientists of her era didn't want her to anthropomorphize the experiences of the chimpanzees, to remain the impartial observer. This has a lot of tangible benefit. And she's a generation or two before me: did her work in the 60s. At least her original work, I wasn't born till 1970s. But the attitude still trickled down from that era. And it still pervades science and engineering fields the same way that anti-sex attitude pervades religion. It's no wonder people think science is boring and hate it. And there's something we can do about it.
Coming from a guy that has been blind for always, saying the sky is always blue sound silly to me when I can see it isn't. But okay.
Now, as to praying. Sure, the people are having treatments, and they don't get better right away, but the prayer has brought some back doctors have given up on.
They do ask questions, but like anything they can't prove, they stop and just write it off to not knowing everything.
James, you are right, I don't subscribe to the "god works in mysterious waysthing. I don't think it has any mystery to it at all. I just think we hunans simply don't know everything.
How you see, or think about God is different for different people. I will continue to believe. My reasons are simply based. This world we live in or on is a fantastic place, and had to come from something.
Like that always blue sky. The sky is wonderful visually. I've seen it turn red even before a storm in the south. Don't ask me how.
It gets blue, and I've seen it almost black during the day too. It is wonderful.
The world came from the big bang.
Boom! And there was light!
Wayne, and we have science that exists to explain all these things. I have some
sight, I don't know about cody.
But the fact of the matter is, that science is contradicting you here. End of
story.
Wayne, I don't need sight to understand how light refraction works. I need
sight to put it to good use, but not to understand it. Just like I don't need a
driver's license to understand how a car works. I know how a car works, I can't
drive a car. See how knowing and using are different things? The fact that you
had to resort to that kind of remark on a sight like this though is incredibly
pathetic.
Now then, you're right, this world did have to come from something. Now how
do you know its your god?
The Bibull.
I am an ordained minister, we allow anyone to speak and tell their story,
however I am against churches, we are the church, fellowshipping its good for
some if you like conventional christianity, however my ministry is not a
conventional ministry. We are strictly a gnostic ministry. However, we don't
exclude you if you don't agree with our convictions. thats not real christianity if
you ask me, you cant exclude say a jew if they disagree with your convictions,
christ never disfellowship anyone, he was against no-one. the Buda was the
same, you can see all of these symbolic teachers excluded no-one, my ministry
won't exclude you because you cant travel or because you cant see or because
your crippled, however we treat you just the same as someone with no
disabilities. we don't own a church because we are the church. Peace be with
you all.
You'd need sight to understand my point, or where I'm coming from.
Like the color red. There is no way I can make you understand that red is not always red. It has different shades.
Now, technically, red is red, but visually red can even change depending on many factors.
Candy Apple red is an exact color, but Candy Apple red can look different.
So, sure, you know how the sky works, and you're correct technically, but not visually, because you see, the sky changes color.
It even changes color technically. We have reasons why this happens, but it is so.
I don't even think it is understood completely. I think we've had no choice but to accept it.
If man understood iit completely, I'd bet we be trying to figure out how not to have a cloudy day.
So a color, like red, is a generalization. Actually, on the color pallet there are a whole host of "reds", like you describe. We do understand because the various shades are different frequencies. How it looks to someone looking at it, has to do with environment and contrast, and other factors. We do technically understand it, but that isn't the same as you experiencing it;. Science can merely explain how you experienced what you experienced.
As to cloudcover, we have already altered this before, during the Vietnam War on the Ho Chi Min trail, where we caused so much rainout that the Viet Kong were thwarted.
We would like a cloudless day, but we need the cloudy days in order to keep the water table regulated. Google Geoengineering for a fascinating look at how we do, and will be, regulating systems we now think of as natural or acts of god. Earth is nought but a biosphere hurtling through space, and biospheres can be regulated, once you know where all the proverbial dipswitches are and what they mean.
And if man could figure out how to keep the water table and not have a cloudy day?
Nature is powerful.
For me, there is no question about god existing. From what I have read on both sides of people telling me he does and people saying he doesn't, my conclusion is that there is a god.
In terms of feeling his presence, yes, I have. I can't really explain the feeling.
Some have mentioned that people that are religious have said terrible things to people with disabilities. I tried to go to a youth group when I was younger, and always felt out of place. People talked to me, but really didn't care what I was up to in my life, or anything like that. Sometimes people would try to pray for my blindness, as if it were a bad thing. For me, there is a reason why I'm blind, and only god knows the big picture. If he chooses to heal me, then great! If not, that's ok as well. I do understand the reaction of wanting to choke someone whenever they say,
"Wouldn't it be great if you could see again?" Or something of that nature. I just smile and let them know that this has to be god's plan for me.
Which god are you referring to? Allah of the muslims? the god of one of the 40,000 different sects of Christianity? Vishnu or Brahma of the hindus?
You can readily tell god is a cultural construct because the only god you probably think of is the god of your parents, your upbringing. Maybe a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, for as historically inaccurate as that would probably be, if there was a historical Jesus to begin with. Jesus visually looked so much more like Osamu Bin Laden than he did any blond blue-eyed Aryan, that your airport personnel would probably profile him under the right circumstances, if he came to your airport. That's because, if he was ever born at all, he was born in that part of the world, with DNA that gave him those physical features. If you find that idea repugnant, that doesn't make you a racist, nor should you feel guilt; only realize just what a cultural construct the god actually is. That's why your apologists like William Lane Craig can go from an impersonal deistic god that created everything to a very specific, evangelical, branded deity of America, which was called the New Israel by many before the second World War. They can make that leap because god is such a cultural construct that in most people's mind there is only one image a god could possibly be found. And every area, customs, and culture is different. So everyone's "god" is different.
Now, let's look at you: There's only one you. You aren't a cultural construct. There's not at the same time a middle eastern you who could be profiled at our airports, and a blond-haired blue-eyed you, and an African you, and a Chinese you. In fact, there's not both an Alaskan you, descended from the gold miners and hunters who braved hostile conditions in the past century, and a Southern white you, whose land was stolen by northern invaders in the past 100 years, and a northern invader you who bargain bought that land at 50 cents an acre.
See how ridiculous that starts to sound? Because you actually, verifiably, exist.
No, not at all.
People have a need to define who God is, but God is not who, but the spirt or feeling.
I also feel God in my life, but not as a who.
So, no, not silly at all.
I use to go to church and see the paints of Jesus and believe that is what he was like, but now I know this is just someone idea, or desire for what they would like him to look.
I don't have an image for God, But I don't recall many physical attributes for most humans, either.
I assume that Jesus had two arms and two legs because he was nailed to the cross in the usual manner. I also assume he was in good shape. That's all.
Jesus wasn't a God, he was a regular man.
Saying that, he was not made in the imagage of God.
God won't be a man, nor will God be blonde haired, or blue eyed like the paints of Jesus, or concept given to the paintings. Smile.
Hold on, but the bible says we were made in gods image... So I don't
understand the last post.
James Wayne doesn't hold to the fundamentalist imagery, and has said plainly in other
threads that he doesn't take the bible literally.
Exactly.
There also are several version of the Bible, due to man wanting to mold God in to what he/she wants God to be.
Some Bibles don't talk about "we're made in God's image."
Now, is image God's imagination, or structor of us?
What does image actually mean, being this is an English word, not in the original language?
Man has built God in the image he/she understands.
A king sitting on a thrown, ruling over the world in a so high unobtainable place
The Bibles, note the S at the end, say that God is also a sprit, a way, truth, life.
I don't see God as any of these things.
God is nature, a force that governs the universe. For this reason, I can, and have felt the presents of God in my life, and do everyday.